


Unconventional Methods

by saellys



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Adolescence, Airbending & Airbenders, Avatar Chirrut, Canonbending, Childhood Trauma, Earthbending & Earthbenders, Firebending & Firebenders, Gen, Genocide, M/M, Not Beta Read, Training Montage, Waterbending & Waterbenders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-10-21 03:31:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17635205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/saellys
Summary: Where Chirrut comes from, they wear red.





	Unconventional Methods

**Author's Note:**

> I'm fourteen years late to this fandom, but I brought crossovers! 
> 
> This is a story of Rogue One characters in the AtLA universe. For the inverse crossover where bending exists in the Star Wars universe alongside the Force, please read the marvelous "the sea is divided" by kurgaya: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10728417

Where Chirrut comes from, weakness is reviled. It is a thing to be beaten and burned away, but no abuse can restore a blind child’s sight.

Where Chirrut comes from, families do not keep their shame locked away in comfort while claiming to be barren. He was disowned before the Fire Sages ever found him. Would he have been allowed to meet them? His unimportance was taken as granted.

He did not pay any mind to his clothes until he left, when he learned quickly that they would draw attention in the lands beyond the archipelago. Still, he keeps an offcut of his old robe tucked among his dusty traveling layers, and takes extra care when washing it in streams.

It is not out of loyalty to a nation, much less a family. Once, during his earliest attempts at firebending, he singed the hem, and the feel of the ragged edge still makes him smile. The color, though, must stay hidden.

Where Chirrut comes from, they wear red.

* * *

“Are you the airbender?”

The boy whirls at once, his wide eyes going wider still, hands tight around his staff. He is younger than they are, and that’s not very old at all. How young they all are, Baze thinks, and how little time they have left. “We’ve been searching for one of your kind,” he says, stepping past Cassian.

A wind kicks up, stirring the boy’s saffron robe and shifting his hair just enough to show the tip of his tattoo above his brow. “I’ll bet you have,” he says, and there is still a sharp edge to the resignation in his voice. “I won’t make this easy.”

Baze is acutely aware of how long ago they left the foothills where a well-meaning villager told them the boy’s name, and how high up they are now. He doesn’t like it.

“It isn’t like that,” Cassian says. To be fair, he is carrying an impressive variety of weapons, and the dark gangling creature that brought them here on a scent trail answers to his call. This is an age that makes for strange collaborators, and the Air Nomads do not have the luxury of choosing who hunts them.

The boy’s mistrustful grimace speaks of experience with traps and betrayals. “Right, so you’re not here to shoot me, and he’s not here to yank this cliff out from under me?”

Baze laughs, loud and bright, which seems to surprise both the airbender and Cassian. He has bent neither clod nor pebble since the Fire Nation attacked. “We thought you’d be most comfortable meeting in a place where you could fly off.” He shoves Chirrut’s shoulder. “This one needs an airbending master.”

The boy peers at Chirrut, who obligingly demonstrates Signal Tower: a commanding low axe kick that raises a pedestal of shale, and then a willow leaf palm to ignite the top. It doesn’t burn long, with the air so thin here and no grass on the pedestal, but it’s enough for the airbender to understand.

The first thing he says when he recovers from the shock is, “You aren’t supposed to train out of order.”

Baze doesn’t laugh again, but his mouth twists. The boy is probably right. More importantly, he has enough grit to scold the Avatar--an important quality in a teacher.

Chirrut places the heel of his left hand, fingers straight, above his right fist. “I apologize, Sifu Bodhi. I met Baze first.”

* * *

Even before the war truly began, there were orphans. It was not uncommon for boys to wander up to the temple in the valley in search of a meal and a bed. The monks turned no one away.

So no one protested when acolyte Baze Malbus, age ten, covered with dirt and twigs and scratches, dragged an eight-year-old boy by the hand into the temple and declared to anyone who would listen, “This is Chirrut. He lives here now.”

In theory “here” meant the temple, but in practice it meant a two meter radius around Baze. They spent their days outdoors in the valley, inventing Signal Tower and Hot Rock and Candlefist and a hundred other variations on the theme of setting stones on fire. For a while they tried compressing and heating pebbles to turn them into crystals, but they never had the patience.

Once, Chirrut asked what the temple looked like. Baze, who had little use for pretty words but was a poet of dirt, constructed a scale model of the whole valley. Chirrut traced it with his hands for a long time, then turned smiling to Baze and asked, “What does a badgermole look like?”

They had been sparring for four years before Chirrut raised a wall in a match. Baze’s projectile crumbled on impact, and Baze himself stopped mid-step, staring at the crescent curve of earth he had not made. Presently the wall sank down enough for Chirrut’s hand to explore its top edge. “Baze,” he called, “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

He didn’t stay that way for long. Their games turned to horse stances and gut furnaces, and more arguments than ever before. Chirrut was not prone to the fits of temper Baze expected from his people, but neither was it a simple matter to coax him into digging his heels. It wasn’t until Baze borrowed Chirrut’s stick to crack nuts that he found his footing.

Two years later they lay in a clearing after a match, and Chirrut’s hand came to rest gently against Baze’s face. Baze waited, barely breathing. He heard motion on the other side of Chirrut. “What are you doing?”

“Shh,” said Chirrut. He moved his hand to Baze’s other cheek. More shifting beyond him. “There. You can look now.”

Baze opened his eyes. There was a little mound of freshly turned dirt with something resembling a nose.

“Why are you laughing?” Chirrut demanded.

“Because that’s what a badgermole looks like.” Chirrut shoved his chest, but Baze only laughed more. Chirrut attempted an armlock but Baze moved faster, bringing him back to the ground. “You’ll have to do better than that, Avatar. Your destiny isn’t sculpting.”

Chirrut raised his hand, but only brought it to Baze’s cheek again. Looking down at him, Baze felt as if his feet were slipping.

Later Chirrut took to going without shoes. Baze fretted when the weather turned cold, but Chirrut only reminded him, “Breath of fire,” and continued frolicking. The earth became his fifth sense.

Which is why, in his eighth year at the temple, he woke when it was still dark on the morning Baze was to take his vows. Chirrut shook Baze awake and said, “Do you feel it?” Baze listened, but heard nothing. Chirrut’s grip on him was tight and cold. “Machines,” he whispered.

* * *

This boy’s self-doubt is a tragedy Baze can scarcely bear to watch. Even Cassian senses the hesitation, and leaves to set snares in the woods.

“Okay,” Bodhi says, circling Chirrut. “Normally there would be scrolls to reference, but… I don’t have any.”

“That’s all right,” Chirrut says graciously. “I can’t read.”

“Neither could I when I started, but the pictures--oh. I’m sorry.”

Chirrut waves him off. “Well,” Bodhi continues, “the first thing to remember is that airbenders don’t stop moving. It’s not like grounding yourself for earthbending, or even the way you might be used to dodging as a firebender. It’s a constant circular motion to maintain momentum.”

At once Chirrut starts to match pace opposite him, and at first Bodhi doesn’t notice, so consumed is he with gathering his wisdom and looking like a sifu. Baze props his chin on his fist to hold in a laugh.

“And then there’s the breath,” Bodhi goes on. “Earthbenders and waterbenders need a source close by, and at least one limb free, but we always have the breath.”

Baze can think of numerous circumstances in which that would be untrue, but his commentary is not needed. Bodhi sticks the tail of his glider into the ground and extends its sails, then takes twenty paces back to where Chirrut waits. He breathes to his belly, and blows out a gale. The wind catches the glider and carries it off their knoll; Bodhi’s sharp hand motion turns it back, and Chirrut follows the flap of the starched fabric.

Bodhi plants the staff again, only five paces away this time. “You try.”

By the time Baze realizes what’s about to happen, it’s too late to shout a warning. Chirrut’s breath, of course, comes out as fire. Bodhi sidesteps away from him, unfathomably fast, and sends a gust to divert the flame. Chirrut’s face goes bloodless at the close call, and Bodhi looks a little pale too as he retrieves his glider.

He clears his throat. “Breath _without_ fire will be the first lesson,” he says. “Let’s take a break.”

Chirrut retreats and Bodhi sits down not far from Baze with his legs in lotus. With effort, he uncurls his hands from his staff and places it on the ground before him, then turns his palms toward the sky. He closes his eyes and takes deep, deep breaths.

“You’re a quick thinker,” Baze says. “And you perform well under pressure.”

Bodhi’s head drops into his hands. “At the southern temple he would never be training with someone like me. There are people for--” He stops, but can’t bring himself to change tense.  

Baze shrugs. “I guess we’re stuck with you.”

The airbender’s expression is somewhere between astonished and offended. “I guess so,” he bites, and when Baze doesn’t rise to it he flops back on the grass. “How do I show him anything? Just… anything!”

“On several occasions,” Baze muses, “I had to physically correct his form. He doesn’t mind being prodded into place.”

“Chirrutbending?” Bodhi says.

Baze agrees, “Chirrutbending.”

Bodhi stares into the distance for some time before he asks, “What about the Avatar state?”

“The what?” Baze’s geography lessons were limited, but he’s certain they only mentioned four nations.

“Has he ever entered it?” At Baze’s stare, he tries, “Have you worked at all with his chakras?”

“Do I look like I know anything about chakras?”

“Well, he needs a teacher for that, too. Someone spiritual. Guru Killi--” Bodhi goes quiet again.

Baze lets it stretch a while. The boy is so terribly brave, but he’ll have to wait a while longer before saying so. He says, “Do you know anything about chakras, Bodhi?”

“Sort of. Yes. But I--”

“There’s no such thing as giving him too much information too soon,” Baze says. “He’s a good listener.”

“Well.” Bodhi gets up and retrieves his glider. His posture shows a new resolve. “So are you. Oh! What if we work on light feet next? I can shoot air for him to dodge, and you can earthbend under his feet to force him to move fast.”

Baze drops his gaze. “I do not earthbend anymore.”

Bodhi doesn’t understand, of course. Even with all he’s witnessed and survived, how could he give up something as natural as breathing? “I’m sorry,” Bodhi says.

“Chirrut is a competent earthbender,” Baze understates somewhat. “He also loves to meditate. You’ll find him receptive to spiritual instruction.”

“How is he with attachments?” Bodhi asks.

Baze’s face burns.

* * *

The Fire Sages never found their Avatar, and the Fire Nation could not abide this sign of weakness. Already reeling from the death of the Emperor, the Fire Lord vowed that if this Avatar could not be found, neither would the next.

The stable glow of jennamite would light the interiors of their tanks and warships so firebender soldiers could focus their energy on destruction. The first phase of invasion was devoted to securing significant crystal deposits and transporting them for refinement.

In the early hours on the morning of the sack of the temple, Baze put his hand over Chirrut’s and whispered, “Are they here for you?”

“I don’t think they know I exist,” said Chirrut. His own uncertainty turned his stomach. The valley was secluded, but they had made no effort beyond that to conceal their training. Anyone could have seen.

“Then we have to run,” Baze replied, with enough certainty for both of them. How Chirrut loved him for that.

They woke the monks and acolytes and warned them before they left, but it was not enough. By midday the smell of smoke filled the valley. When they reached a stream, Chirrut stopped to cut off his topknot and let the water carry it away.

He reached out and Baze silently dipped his head toward his hand. Chirrut’s fingers moved through Baze’s hair, measuring the length against his own. For the moment, it was the same.

* * *

They find a waterbending master, incongruously enough, at the edge of the Fire Nation. She moonlights as a spirit, but Chirrut has enough experience with being the Great Bridge by now to know better. When he pursues her along the cliff’s edge and sends a gust of wind to take her broad hat, the others see the stripes that have the villagers calling her the Painted Lady.

Bodhi gasps. “I thought they were extinct!”

“Do you hear yourself right now?” Cassian asks him. Bodhi only shrugs.

No, Ahsoka Tano is not extinct, and yes, she is a southern waterbender, but she is in the middle of important work and has no time to train Chirrut. And so, naturally, Chirrut ends up accompanying her to destroy an ore refinery. And then they hide Bodhi underneath the planks of a ramshackle fishing village to help scare off the firebenders. And then it’s down to Chirrut to earthbend the sediment out of the river water and boil the village’s drinking supply. And finally, when they are away in the hills around the campfire with fish stew and all the tea the villagers could scrape together in gratitude, that is when Ahsoka tell her story.

“The raids started sixteen years ago. I think the Fire Nation had been waiting for the last Avatar to die, knowing the next would be a firebender and they would have all the power they needed. I don’t know if anyone else noticed, or cared about what they were doing to us. The raiders found me when I was fourteen. I expected to die in their prison, but one day a guard unlocked my cell himself. Then he just… collapsed.”

She takes a long drink of tea. Baze thinks he hears Bodhi’s teeth chattering. He nudges Chirrut’s foot, and the fire grows almost imperceptibly brighter.

“There was a woman from my tribe. Mother Talzin. She came to the Fire Nation herself when the raiders took her son, and spent years trying to find him. It was no use. Eventually she gave up searching. She freed me because she wanted a student. She could pull water from plants, from thin air, from her own body. She could... ” Ahsoka swallows. “She wanted me to help her get revenge. I refused.”

“Do you know where she is now?” Cassian asks, and Bodhi and Baze stare at him. “What? An enemy of the Fire Nation is a friend of ours, right?”

Bodhi leans closer to Baze and stage whispers, “Did we ever explain to him that extremist freedom fighters sometimes have bad ideas?”

“Did we need to explain that, after the girl at the dam?”

“Ohhh, we don’t talk about her anymore.”

“Right. What was her name? June?”

“Her name was not June,” Cassian sulks at his drink.

Ahsoka bends the tea out of her cup and forms a perfect sphere above the fire. Inside it they are all refracted, inverted. “If you mean to bring balance,” Ahsoka tells Chirrut, “You cannot use their methods.”

Chirrut waits a long time before answering, his face turned toward the flames. “I understand,” he says at last.

“Good,” Ahsoka replies, almost cheerful now. She bends her tea back and swigs it. “We start in the morning. You’ll need your rest.”

She curls up in her sleeping roll, and Bodhi and Cassian do the same. Chirrut withdraws a few paces from the fire. Baze waits a moment before he follows. “The tea here isn’t bad,” he offers.

Chirrut cants his head away. “I am not like them.”

“You think I don’t know you, Chirrut Îmwe?”

“There are people suffering now, and I am doing nothing.”

How desperately he wants to touch Chirrut. “When you end the Fire Lord, you end their suffering too.”

“Did you hear her?” Chirrut turns on him. “I cannot defeat him the way a firebender would.” And even now he still turns his ear toward Baze, waiting for an answer--for guidance.

“Drowning then,” Baze says. “Crushing. You could probably pull the air right out--”

“You know what I mean.”

Baze does. They are surrounded by self-imposed rules. No earthbending. No eating meat. No killing the man responsible for thousands of deaths and immeasurable suffering. “For a bunch of benders, we’re awfully inflexible.” 

Chirrut doesn’t smile. Baze puts his hand at the back of Chirrut’s neck and presses his brow to Chirrut’s. “Come and get some sleep.”

Chirrut gets under Baze’s blanket, their backs together. Baze feels the tension down his spine for hours.

* * *

The door clanged shut, and across the corridor in the other holding cell, the other brawlers heckled them. “Tarine drinkers,” Baze jeered. He turned and found Chirrut already settled on the floor, legs folded neatly under him, palms up. “You’re going to meditate for the door to open?”

Chirrut turned his head until he located their black-clad cellmate by his breath. “It bothers him because he knows it’s possible,” he said.

The man in the corner eyed them both, then went back to staring dully out the bars. Baze couldn’t tell from looking why he was locked up. He had the face of a friend.

“We’ve been in worse prisons than this,” Chirrut reminded Baze.

“This is a first for me,” the man muttered.

Baze could have said a few words about the perils of walking an amoral high wire in the uncertain times of war, but he sensed how unwelcome this would be. How many others were lost in this world without something to believe in? Instead he paced one side of the cell, then the next side, then around the other prisoner. He hated the way the metal floor blocked his footfalls from resonating properly, almost as much as he had come to hate Ba Sing Se. It was unnatural to have so many walls in one place.

He faced Chirrut. “What,” he said, “is iron?”

Chirrut craned his face up. “I thought our lessons were over, Sifu Baze.”

Baze only tapped his foot.

Chirrut’s head tilted. He felt the vibrations through his knees and toes, and understood. Of course he did--even now, Baze was a superb teacher.

Chirrut put his hand on the floor. His face tightened with concentration. Any traces of ore were scattered, fragmented within the metal sheet. He made a fist, lifted it, and brought it straight down.

“Ow,” he said.

The man in the corner regarded them coolly. “What did they put you in here for, exactly?”

“Boiling tea.”

“Focus,” Baze said. “Remember what this cell is made of. Remember what you are made of.”

Chirrut took a deep breath, as if he was about to blow out a plume of flame, and yes, that seemed right. He would have to make himself the furnace.

He punched again.

The floor bent beneath him.

With sweat on his face, as well as a smirk Baze would never be able to wipe off even if he started bending again tomorrow and bested him nine times out of ten, Chirrut struck the metal once more. It breached with a protesting squeal, and he pried back the edges, and underneath was good solid dirt, and Chirrut drove his hands into it in badgermole position.

“Are you coming?” Baze asked their cellmate, who looked a bit dazed.

“Yeah,” he said at last, and in a cloud of dust and yells from the other prisoners, they escaped. Underground in the lightless tunnel he was making, Chirrut reached back with one hand and felt the grin on Baze’s face.

They were halfway up the outermost wall on the back of their new friend’s shirshu before the guards caught up, but Chirrut only deflected their projectiles without apparent effort. “Good riddance,” Baze said as they crested the wall and left Ba Sing Se behind.

* * *

The next morning Chirrut balances on a rock at the river’s edge. “Water is the element of change and adaptation,” Ahsoka tells him from her own rock. “Fireball.”

Without hesitation he summons one from breath to fist and out at her. He hears it sizzle and dissipate, and then a cloud of hot steam reaches him. It cools and condenses on his face, fast and clinging. “You cannot destroy water,” Ahsoka says. Chirrut wipes his face and flicks the water back into the river.

“This element is your natural opposite,” says Ahsoka. “It’s been easy for you so far because air is fire’s sister element, and earthbending was play. Nothing you’ve been taught will help you now.”

“No offense taken,” Bodhi calls from the shore.

“Earthbending was easy because I love Baze,” Chirrut counters, smiling beatifically.

Baze snorts. “Easy for whom?”

Ahsoka lets all of this wash past her. “Push me off,” she says. Chirrut drives his heel down to shift her rock, and tiger monkey palms a blast of air at her. There is no splash. “With water. Reach down with your chi. Feel it curve like a cupped hand, and release.”

“I thought you would show me forms.” Chirrut tries not to sound petulant.

“Forms are for waterbender children to copy until they can feel what they’re doing. You’re three quarters of an Avatar, and you’re going to _feel_ until you make your own forms.”

“No one can anticipate your moves if they don’t recognize your forms,” Bodhi realizes aloud. “We did it wrong.”

“We did it fine,” says Baze.

“Push me off, Avatar.” This time, he hears a ripple. “Better,” says Ahsoka, but only after a long pause during which she is likely committing to positive reinforcement only. “Remember, you don’t dance through water like you do air. You are the current. Shift your weight, and lead with your elbows and wrists. Again.”

Chirrut drops into something close to horse stance but more fluid, hips loose, feet turned in her direction. He imagines his hand entering the water and the water rushing to fill it, then drawing back and lapping forward again. Always in motion. If he is the current, he can wait for the water to rush where he leads, and when the cupped hand of his chi is full and he feels it about to ebb, he needs only to suggest--

A slap of wave on stone. “Those were my toes.” There is a smile in her voice. “Again.”  

“Hey!” It’s Cassian’s voice, from the top of the cliff. “There’s something in the snares!”

“I hope it’s a nice big mango,” says Bodhi, who has grown tired of water chestnut at every meal.

“It’s big,” Cassian assures him. He scales down the cliff on Kaytoo to retrieve Baze and Ahsoka. Chirrut rises to the top on a column of air, and feels Bodhi land lightly beside him on the turf.  

Even this far from the treeline, he can feel it. A heartbeat like a fire, large and calm. It is waiting for him.

Grinning, he breaks into a run. It is high summer and he is in his home country with bare feet on soft grass, and for a few moments Chirrut can forget that they are only days away from the comet. Perhaps later he’ll find some flowers and weave them into Baze’s hair.

Bodhi races him, but Kaytoo is faster than both of them. Cassian shushes them at the edge of the woods. “I think it’s a starbird.”

“I thought they were extinct,” Ahsoka whispers.

“Seriously?” says Bodhi.

Chirrut pushes past the others, hand out to keep the leaves off his face, and follows the pulse. He stops only when he feels warm breath, and hears a rope snap and burn away to ash. A great curved beak presses against his sternum. “Hello,” he says, and his hand finds a downy neck.

“It’s unconventional for animal guides to present themselves so late,” Ahsoka observes as the others join them.

“She’s right on time,” Chirrut says.

Baze adds, “If she was any earlier it would have been a liability.”

“Lots of people have animal companions,” Cassian says defensively.

“Yes, but yours doesn’t shout _I am a firebender and also the Avatar_.”

“You’re absolutely right. It’s Chirrut’s job to shout that.”

“What does she look like?” Chirrut asks.

“Orange,” says Bodhi, at the same time Cassian says, “Red.”

The starbird huffs against his chest, and Chirrut says, “I need you both to understand how little that means to me.”

In the embarrassed silence Ahsoka says, “She looks like flames.” That’s more like it. Pleased, Chirrut scratches the bird’s neck, and she trills softly.

“What are you going to name her?” Bodhi asks.

“I’m not sure she’s mine to name.”

Bodhi steps closer and the starbird turns her head and snuffs. Chirrut hears a soft thud, and a rare and precious laugh, and Bodhi says, “How about Rogue?”

* * *

Baze chose the temple at age six because he wanted to master earthbending. So far as he knows, his parents still live in a village ten miles north of the temple valley.

It did not occur to him that he was terribly lonely until Chirrut arrived, but once he realized how much he had missed something he’d never had before, he didn’t move from his side. Even when Chirrut’s smart mouth made him want to put the boy neck deep in the earth and leave him there overnight.

To attain control over the Avatar state, and ensure that his own spirit could never be bent, Chirrut had to release all attachments.

Baze made no such promises. He gave up his family, worldly comforts, a home, and earthbending itself. He will not give Chirrut up.

* * *

Chirrut has fallen. All the instruction came to nothing: Baze’s goading, Bodhi’s unshakable courage, Ahsoka’s vast ocean of patience, even the fraught night and day he spent out of their reach with the Bendu.

Baze is too far away to take Chirrut’s hand, too wounded to close the distance. He presses his palm against the ground. It carries no trace of a pulse. Above him, by the light of a comet, a formation of dagger-shaped airships pass, spewing fire. The others have failed as well.

The Fire Lord looms close. He will not touch Chirrut. Baze will make sure of it.

There is no time for the honor and respect Chirrut deserves in burial, but he can do this much. Slowly, gently, he splits the ground beneath Chirrut’s body, and mends it back together over him. If he’d known Baze would earthbend now of all times, Chirrut would have had such words for him.

 _You will always find me_ , he told Baze that morning, meaning it as a reassurance. And the strength of his faith was reassuring, but to outlive him was unthinkable. Worse, to live long enough to meet the next Avatar, to see the same eyes in a different face--unbearable.

So he is relieved when the Fire Lord’s attention turns to him, lightning sparking off the depthless black helmet. Baze has nothing left for him. He looks at Chirrut’s resting place as he waits for the strike. How comforting it must be, enclosed in the earth, under all that pressure and warmth.

The earth rumbles, and bursts with light.

A blazing diamond of energy, wreathed in fire, stone, wind, and water that has been pulled from the very air, streaks toward the Fire Lord. The lightning blinks out. They disappear from Baze’s view.

Up in the sky, one errant airship shears through all the rest. Baze shuts his eyes.

Sometime later, a glider floats down nearby, and a vermillion bird joins it. Cool water flows over his scorched side. “We have to find him,” Baze grates.

“Easy,” soothes Ahsoka. “We will.”

And they do.

* * *

When an earthbender acolyte met a firebender outcast, the monks let them set up an extra pallet in Baze’s room. That first night, Chirrut fell asleep sitting up on Baze’s bed, one blanket wrapped around them both. He did not budge, not far anyway, for the next seven decades.

* * *

They are old men now, and that is more than Baze could have asked from this life.

He finds Chirrut at the north end of the house with his ear tilted toward the bay, listening to sparrowgulls. “Do you see what we built?” he asks Baze. He grunts an affirmative. “What does it look like?”

Here is a thing he does only for Chirrut. His metalbending students must learn without the benefit of demonstration--must convince themselves it's possible, and feel before they find their own forms. But rules, even the ones he makes only for himself, are no good if they can’t be bent now and then. Baze puts his hand against the antique Earth Kingdom shield on the wall and raises a relief.

Across the bay is a shining city—a home to industry and spirituality, benders and non, a justice system no previous Avatar would recognize, and all the elements. A home where one family can wear many colors.

Also, home to pro-bending. Baze _loves_ pro-bending.

The Regency Council, made of elected representatives from all four nations, governed the Fire Nation until the crown princess came of age and led her people in the ways of peace. She and her twin brother trained with Chirrut for years; their vanished mother returned once it was safe for her and served several terms on the Council. The powerless former Fire Lord died in prison twenty years ago, reconciled with his family, repentant for his crimes, and finally at peace.

Baze lowers his hand and Chirrut puts his in its place. His thumb traces the outlines of temple spires for a long time. “Does my statue look like me?”

“Yes,” says Baze, “because you didn’t sculpt it.”

“I don’t need to sculpt,” Chirrut fires back. “I have you.”

Baze regards him with the blend of fondness and exasperation he has brewed specially for Chirrut all this time. They are old men, and Chirrut will not last much longer. The idea of outliving him and meeting a new Avatar is intolerable. Fortunately the Avatar is not the only one who can sidestep death, and Baze intends to be an absolute nuisance in the spirit world. Maybe he’ll get one of the giant forms that really creep people out.

And then he’ll find his way to wherever all the past Avatars line up until they are needed, and he’ll sit down with his back against Chirrut’s and spend the rest of time mocking the cryptic wisdom they give the poor child who has to deal with the next mess.

For now there is a fresh pot of tea and a match on the radio, and his husband’s long hair between his fingers. For now, the new world they built does not need them.

**Author's Note:**

> Massive thanks to confabulatrix for spitballing parts of this with me. She is also the one who suggested a vermillion bird as Chirrut's animal guide, and at the time I'd forgotten that Chirrut canonically has a starbird pendant. Even outside of her ~~birth element~~ primary fandoms, confabulatrix is brilliant.


End file.
